August 17 is one date that everybody decides to ignore, even the ever-growing media.

Is Ziaul Haq, the military dictator who changed the political and social fabric of this country forever, forgotten for good? What an irony of fate that today not one politician in this country is ready to own his legacy, not those he had helped nurture. Yet his marks on the country’s constitution and statute books are indelible and unfortunate.

So, to pretend that Ziaul Haq stands forgotten is just a convenient collective response. Actually, one isn’t even sure if it’s correct to call it a "collective" response.

Ziaul Haq the man may have died but Zia the thought lives on.

On his 27th death anniversary, it is time to refresh people’s memories on what Ziaul Haq meant and did and left us with. What does he mean for the generation that grew up in the Musharraf era? Who goes to that grave in one corner of the towering Faisal Mosque where he was buried with much fanfare as a president in uniform? How do journalists remember those repressive and coercive times when some of their colleagues were publicly flogged? What does his rule mean for the women in this country? I.A. Rehman is right in pointing out that his greatest disservice remains transforming the state into a theocracy, a legacy we are forced to live on with.

Is Ziaul Haq, indeed, the black man he is painted out to be or did we lay the seeds for a man of his ilk to come and nurture. His immediate predecessor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was his nemesis too is held responsible in many ways for initiating steps that Ziaul Haq then took to their logical conclusion; though the original sins were committed much before ZAB took charge.

Ziaul Haq had ridiculed the Constitution as a piece of paper he could tatter to pieces. The Constitution today is held up as a sacred document while no subsequent general or politician has been able to repeat such an utterance. On an optimistic note, in a way, history has given a verdict against him. Hopefully, the people of this country will soon purge the country of Zia’s obscurantist thought.